Halliburton: Privatizing Iraq's oil resources

Halliburton was awarded by the Pentagon a secret, no-bid contract worth as much as $7 billion. Months before the U.S. military dropped bombs and missiles on Iraq, the War Department was secretly working with Vice President Dick Cheney's old company (Halliburton) on a deal that would give the world's second largest oil services company total control over Iraq's oilfields. The company has been given control of the Iraqi oil operations, including oil distribution.

Bechtel: Privatizing Iraq's water

Bechtel received a no-bid contract from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on April 17, 2003. The contract provides for: emergency repair or rehabilitation of power generation facilities, electrical grids, municipal water systems, sewage systems, airport facilities, the dredging, repair and upgrading of the Umm Qasr seaport (before the seaport was even occupied by the U.S. military) and reconstruction of hospitals, schools, ministry buildings, irrigation structures and transportation links. Its declared goal is to repair or rehabilitate up to 100 hospitals, 6,000 schools (out of approximately 25,000), up to six airports and one southern seaport. The contract is for $34.6 million initially, up to $680 million over 18 months, and could eventually be worth up to $100 billion, thus making it potentially the largest Iraq reconstruction contract.

In California, Bechtel installed one of the nuclear power plant reactors backwards.

In Bolivia, Bechtel was part of a consortium which took control of the water supply and increased prices by an average of 35 percent. Many in the city of Cochabamba could not afford to pay and street protests led to several deaths. "Bechtel is not a company that has a sound social or environmental track record," said Juliette Beck of “Public Citizen”. "It should not be involved in the humanitarian reconstruction effort in Iraq.. Bechtel and privatization go hand in hand."

"Their record depicts that trend-they privatize the service, they raise the price and only those who can afford it get it," said Antonia Juhasz, of the International Forum on Globalization in San Francisco. "If one were to define a core democratic decision a people could make, the treatment of things like water and power and media would be it," said Benjamin Barber, author of the newly released book Fear's Empire: War, Terrorism and Democracy. "It's a pretty basic part of government."

Research Triangle Institute:

The Research Triangle Institute (RTI) of North Carolina was awarded a contract by USAID on April 11, 2003. The contract is for $7.9 million initially, and up to $167.9 million over 12 months. RTI's contract provides for the "strengthening of management skills and capacity of local administrations and civic institutions to improve delivery of essential municipal services such as water, health, public sanitation and economic governance; includes training programs in communications, conflict resolution, leadership skills and political analysis." No uproar on this contract, though. RTI had given no money to the Republican partners. No RTI board members are tied to the Pentagon. Cheney is not on the RTI payroll. Seems rather innocent, right?

Not at all.

RTI's president and CEO, Victoria Franchetti Haynes, openly sees RTI as a vehicle for advancing corporate interests. Under her leadership, RTI has aggressively pursued relationships with pharmaceutical, health care and biotechnology industries, in addition to many, more benign, government and non-profit contracts.

Let's look again at the RTI contract. One of the major overarching issues is RTI's work in building allegedly "strong, indigenous, democratic governments." Is this merely PR to smooth relations between the Iraqi people and the occupying power? Each step of RTI's project-"identifying indigenous leaders," "training administrators in political analysis"-opens a door for smuggling in pro-U.S. propaganda and generally making Iraq's political climate more hospitable to U.S. interests.

The second, related issue is whether, in the process of "designing and implementing programs to enhance or improve basic human services," RTI will advance the interests of the people or the interests of the business elite (foreign and domestic). RTI will likely push heavily for corporate control as opposed to public control of municipal services, just as they did in Eastern Europe.

In South Africa, this privatization agenda has been a total disaster. For example, a huge French multinational took over the water services during the late 1990s, and quickly hiked up rates and turned off water supplies to entire poor townships, sparking riots and strikes. A recent report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists claims those efforts to privatize water systems in South Africa led to a cholera outbreak, as people unable to pay higher rates started drinking from polluted streams, ponds and lakes. The outbreak killed nearly 300 people. [21]

If RTI pushes for the same thing in Iraq-and there is no reason to believe that RTI will act differently there-then RTI will be ensuring U.S. control over Iraqi society long after the armies are gone. It is neoliberal occupation, but still occupation. Already, RTI is "identifying public water works specialists to provide short-term and long-term technical assistance in Iraqi water supply/distribution systems, and to provide Iraqi counterparts with the knowledge, skills and abilities to repair and sustain Iraqi water systems."

The context for all of this is the history of USAID, which contracted RTI. As an arm of the government, it largely engages in development projects that are in line with U.S. political and military interests. It has also long been criticized for having overly-close ties to corporate America, and its projects end up as tools to help businesses penetrate new markets.

RTI also received a subcontract from USAID, via Creative Associates International in Washington, D.C., for "education system reform." This contract ignited much controversy when it was revealed that there were plans to rewrite Iraqi school textbooks-i.e., make them more pro-U.S. Reports conflict as to whether that aspect of the contract has now been cut or de-emphasized.

How RTI's activities play out on the ground should be closely monitored, and we need to not only focus on Bechtel and Halliburton and other large contracts, but vigilantly monitor RTI as well.

Other culprits to monitor:

DynCorp Aerospace Operations (UK), a subsidiary of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), awarded, by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, a $22 million contract-that could grow to $500 million-to "re-establish police, justice and prison functions in post-conflict Iraq." As noted by the Observer, "by hiring military contractors such as DynCorp, the U.S. government has found an effective way to conduct foreign policy by proxy and in secret. These proxies cannot be monitored, are effectively immune from all criminal sanctions, and are dangerously hard to control since they answer to corporate bosses, not military officials," (April 13, 2003). In Bosnia, DynCorp personnel were involved in sex slave trading of young girls as well as a number of other fraudulent acts. In Ecuador, farmers filed a class action lawsuit and charged that DynCorp recklessly sprayed their homes and farms, causing illnesses and deaths, and destroying crops.